(c) 2009-2018, 2026 Jeremy Grayson. A list, but also a love letter to music. A collection of links to the new, the old, the recent and the random. New List at 12.01am (most) Saturday mornings.
Contrary to expectations, no gig report from me this week. I would have liked to enthuse about W.I.T.C.H.'s visit to Sidney & Matilda in Sheffield on Wednesday just gone, and share some pictures, even. Work commitments, alas, thwarted me at the last, and with that a potentially once in a lifetime opportunity to see the reactivated Zamrock legends came and went.
I can assure those that immediately harbour concerns of me going back to my previous state of finding excuses not to go to gigs, and gradually disengaging from music all over again, that that ain't happening. The thousands of words I'm writing on Eurovision concurrently with compiling regular Lists doesn't feel like the actions of someone giving up!
Life still intervenes sometimes, that's all; and with the increasing need to juggle a portfolio of jobs, whilst also attending to the needs of two kids with complex trauma issues and very elderly parents, any opportunity for a night out is still grasped with both hands whenever all things remain set fair.
Be that all as it may. Do please enjoy the track below taken from W.I.T.C.H.'s joyous album of last year.
Eurovision week looms large again, for good or ill, and as well as currently compiling some notes for 2026 to be published on here in the next couple of days (see if you can guess ahead of these which entry has angered me like few others in 45 years of watching the show!), I took the opportunity last weekend to retrieve as many of my notes on previous renewals as I could find scattered around cyberspace, and bring them all into the one place.
I've already posted one blog entry compiling those, but in case you missed them and are sufficiently curious, here they are again:
Next week's List, number 254, will be an all-Eurovision special. Possibly the last, unless I want to start deep diving more assiduously into national finals or renewals from the last century?
Away from all of that, this week's TML highlights include a belated appraisal of Allo Darlin', belated in so far as it's getting on for a year since the joys of Bright Nights, the Anglo-Australian quartet's first album in a decade, saw the light of day.
As much as any act whose lifespan coincided with that of the Indietracks festival, Allo Darlin' felt like our band (along with The Just Joans, the Spook School and Standard Fare, I'd suggest).
Footage from 2008 exists online of Elizabeth Morris - at the time Allo Darlin' was effectively her solo vehicle - playing a version of Emily on her ukelele to a gathering, curious crowd on one of the platforms of the hosting venue, the Midland Railway centre in Swanwick. I'm in there somewhere, if out of view throughout. Only the fact a fair chunk of the first verse is missing has led me to post an alternative festival performance of the same track instead, but the gist is exactly the same.
From that well-received, if not to say breakthrough, Indietracks performance onwards, it was possible to follow Elizabeth's progress at close order.
The expansion of the band to the quartet which survives to this day. Opening for Australian janglepop legends The Lucksmiths on the occasion of their final ever English concert. The cheek of the Henry Rollins Don't Dance single, replete with Saturday Night Fever-apeing artwork. Repeat returns to Indietracks, most memorably the celebratory set in 2010 (as their debut album continued its ascent from merely popular to required listening among the indiepop faithful) and the festival-hushing solo reading of Tallulah in 2012. Guest appearances with The Just Joans. Excellent choices of cover versions, including the rockist-baiting interpretation of a Ramones staple included here. Guitar duties for Tender Trap at the invitation of Amelia Fletcher.
All this and more besides in little more than eight years. It was quite the ride, with plenty of us following it all.
(Allo Darlin' - Indietracks Festival, 25/07/2014. Pictures are author's own)
Bright Nights is the Allo Darlin' tempus fugit album, wearing as it does the hallmarks of the subsequent decade's worth of life, love, loss, building families, car crashes and enduring companionship.
It doesn't bounce off the walls musically in the way that tracks such as Kiss Your Lips used to do, but to thine own self be true; to these ears it sounds exactly as one might expect a ten years older Allo Darlin' to sound if allowing age and wisdom to bear its influence, rather than trying to reproduce former glories too exactly. Its measured calmness and instrumentation even found it a place (and a top ten place, at that) in the UK Folk Album chart, and not in the least bit incongruously.
For however long the reunion lasts, it's a joy to have them back.
Other things particularly worth flagging among another List that I (obviously) recommend in full include:
Metric, shared this week in both 2026 and 2006 flavours. As with other recent Then And Now subjects Howling Bells, I await the Metric album I still love throughout rather than enjoy a number of tracks of, but where Romanticize the Dive is good, it's very, very good indeed.
Die Art, Billy Bragg-endorsed post-punk survivors of pre-Reunification East Germany, shared here both because Kiss Me Till I Die is something of a mid-1990s favourite of theirs for me (and evidently also for those contemporaneous compilation CD compilers who turned to it fairly frequently), and also as an act of solidarity with their home city of Leipzig following the recent attack there.
Deathprod, the ongoing project of Norwegian experimental artist Helge Sten, heard here utilising the unique creations (cloud-chamber bowls, chordophones, etc.) of fellow experimentalist and instrument builder Harry Partch (1901-1974) with typically disquieting results.
As promised and threatened a few weeks back, not just a sufficiently lengthy Craven Faults piece for The Long Goodbye, but on reflection still my favourite from this enigmatic West Yorkshire performer's growing repertoire.
J xx
Click on the video or link to play each tune (links last checked as all working 30/04/2026).
As mentioned in the January post which presaged the relaunch of That Music List, watching and writing about the Eurovision Song Contest was at least one thing I continued to keep on top of during the blog's hiatus.
However, those thoughts were mostly shared either just among Facebook friends, or else with visitors of the lounge of two largely sports (and by extension sports betting) oriented fora with controlled access. As such, more of you will have missed these at the time than saw them.
The posts which I have now shared on That Music List seek to redress that, accepting of course that they likely enjoy mostly curiosity status only, concerning as they do events now past.
The quantity of content on each renewal of Eurovision covered depends on what I've been able to salvage from elsewhere (one of the aforementioned two fora no longer exists), how much time to write I had around each contest, and also to an extent how interesting or not I found each contest!
Pretty much all of the words I committed to print at the time I stand by, the most glaring exception being those for the 2025 Estonia entry, which I admit I got completely wrong (and have annotated in teacher's bold red pen accordingly). See what you agree or disagree with. See how many songs you can actually remember!
To describe the lead-up to this year's Contest as eventful would be an understatement, would it not.
I shall let the music do the talking wherever possible, though background contexts (note the plural) will inevitably muscle their way to the fore on occasion.
J xx
Semi-Final #1
ICELAND
VÆB - Róa
Stompy, shouty six-eight electrofolk by siblings in bacofoil tracksuits. Gets by on force of personality more than the (ironically) underpowered Power of last year ever could or did, and the return to singing in Icelandic is pleasing, but those boys’ voices will do will to command the auditorium. Accusations by Israel of Róa plagiarising Hatunat HaShana (who'd plagiarise a track co-performed by a tax dodger tarnished by association with historic statutory rape allegations?), aren’t worth the candle.
POLAND
JUSTYNA STECZKOWSKA - Gaja
I love the fact that this entry has compelled me to revisit Justyna Steczkowska’s Sama, which finished 18th in her one previous appearance in the Contest back in 1995. The reasons that piece of minor-key folk-tinged trip hop may have been overlooked back then – downbeat, melancholic, introverted – read like positive boons now in a Eurovision era more receptive to shade as well as light. Right song, wrong era? Gaja sees Justyna demonstrate more of her sizeable vocal range for longer, as well as some entry level physical acrobatics; and if I’m not enjoying it as much as its predecessor quite yet, there’s time. A frontrunner if YouTube and Spotify traffic alone count for anything.
SLOVENIA
KLEMEN - How Much Time Do We Have Left
The sincerity isn’t in question, and How Much Time Do We Have Left navigates its way through a similar scenario to Wires by Athlete just that bit more skillfully lyrically. The song suffers, however, from its failure to decide half way through whether to hit the button marked lung-bursting, euphoric finale or continue to bump around in a more low-key manner. Reconciling Klemen the earnest singer facing the worst projections of his wife’s cancer diagnosis with Klemen the comedy impressionist (with one recent instance of blackface, by the way) isn’t the easiest, either.
ESTONIA
TOMMY CASH - Espresso Macchiato
I’ve expounded at length in these reviews over the years about comedy songs which land, and those which don’t. I wonder whether you can guess into which silo I’ll be dropping this exercise in baiting Italians by a performer with an extensive résumé of hairy-palmed sexist material and a political moral compass on the blink? Disappointing to learn he’s collaborated with Käärijä of Cha Cha Cha fame, really.
(Your writer interjects: I got this completely wrong, didn't I! It took a far wiser person than me to explain in forensic detail out on her personal YouTube channel that Espresso Macchiato was a full-bored assault on the tech bros of her American homeland (and their mentality) rather than an exercise in Italophobia. In my defence, the comedy accents blurred that picture a little, with the other, still unarguably unpleasant material referred to above, also relatively fresh in my mind).
SPAIN
MELODY - ESA DIVA
Unfinished business for Melodía Ruiz Gutiérrez (for it is she), having won over the jury but not the public in Spain’s 2009 selection process. Possibly a blessing, that, considering how many teenagers this Contest can chew up and spit out (not everyone’s a Nicole or Sandra Kim), and the 2025 model of Melody has the pipes and presence to do a song justice on this stage. Pity the material isn’t more memorable, however; some nods to Loreen’s Tattoo among the obligatory Flamenco guitar licks, but it’s all just a bit too wordy and fussy for what it needs to be.
UKRAINE
ZIFERBLAT - Bird of Pray
The longer Ukraine’s battle for survival against Russia endures, so it becomes harder to resist unwittingly patronising their ongoing strong showings in Eurovision as incredible achievements in spite of everything. Safer, then, just to deal with the song completely on its merits: Ziferblat are very different to anything representing Ukraine in recent memory; they offer up an engaging, labyrinthine melodic rock number that stays with one longer than many other entries this year; and they wouldn’t be going deep into the contest out of turn, having missed out in the national vote two years previously.
SWEDEN
KAJ - Bara bada bastu
A year off from the usual precision-tooled, high production-valued dance or pop? Not sure I saw that coming. An altogether more wholesome novelty piece than Estonia’s, all the more amusing for the three members of KAJ remaining soberly suited throughout (more gratuitous acts might have stripped off once the sauna appeared on stage), though not as laugh out loud funny as, say, a Guildo Horn. Another collector’s item for lovers of local dialects in Eurovision, mind, being rendered in the Finland Swedish Vörå variety. We’ll get a UK entry in Sheffield speak yet.
PORTUGAL
NAPA - Deslocado
A longing for home by Madeirans displaced either to mainland Portugal, or else further afield, as dictated by work or study. As with the likes of Salvador Sobral and Maro in the recent past, a Portuguese entry with not a hint of histrionics or hysterics about it, albeit it rather goes missing in its middle third. Not as compelling as it might have been, then, but certainly pretty, and mercifully betraying more of NAPA’s Beatles influences than their Chilli Peppers ones.
NORWAY
KYLE ALESSANDRO - Lighter
Quite a few entries in the Eurovision bingo card crossed off at once here, from the copious use of fire in the staging to the twelvety hundredth recycling of some of the motifs from Tarkan Tevetoğlu's (later Holly Valance's) Kiss Kiss. Largely the work of nineteen-year-old performer Kyle Alessandro, and if not advertising his worth as prodigious a teen talent as, say, For You-era Prince or We Could Send Letters-era Roddy Frame, it's far from without merit.
BELGIUM
RED SEBASTIAN - Strobe Lights
By all accounts a love song to Belgium’s rave culture, albeit the rave culture of now, so old buggers like me ought not get excited all of a sudden and expect a facsimile of Injected with a Poison by Praga Khan or similar. The neon red and black stage setting feels as if it’s been done to death in the recent past, something which surely won’t be lost on those required to judge on such matters. The song is a joy, however – pounding, irresistible EDM with two perfectly executed leaps into a sustained falsetto vocal. Before the Party’s Over’s mystifying failure to make the Final last year surely won’t be repeated with this.
ITALY
LUCIO CORSI - Volevo Essere Un Duro
The bullied kid emerges informed by his past rather than remaining a prisoner of it, able to interpret his fragility as a strength. Even if I hadn't cared much for this song, I'd still have felt seen by it. An Italian rock track, yes, but from a more poised, delicate, softer end of the spectrum than Måneskin, glam get-up and strings and all. Lucio Corsi's earliest forays into music apparently had something in common with Gabriel-era Genesis; I think I'd have quite liked him to create something that tries to condense Supper's Ready into three minutes.
AZERBAIJAN
MAMAGAMA - Run with U
Maroon 5 warning! Maroon 5 warning! This is not a test! This is not a drill! Offensively inoffensive, and I've heard too much of the electric saz in Omar Souleyman's irresistible electro-dabke now to settle for Mamagama's weedy acoustic equivalent.
SAN MARINO
GABRY PONTE - Tutta l'Italia
Probably my favourite San Marino entry musically since Serhat, the jolly singalonga chorus having plenty to do with that. I surely won't be the first person this week to suggest that the staging is a weak point, however. If it's a given that Gabry Ponte (formerly one third of Eiffel 65, all you fellow old people out there) wouldn't be able to command much of a presence from behind his mixing desk, the singer (hidden behind a bird mask) and instrumentalists could at least have been pushed front and centre rather than apologetically assembled next to him. A performance which feels delivered in spite of you, rather than to you, which is a pity.
ALBANIA
SHKODRA ELEKTRONIKE - Zjerm
Where once the Contest's tracks advocating world peace and tolerance would be, without fail, yer simple four-four anthems with huge choruses, here we have the same message but delivered by Albanian immigrants from Italy in the form of rumbling, brooding, orchestral folktronica. Note also the most lugubrious spoken word break, which could easily be misconstrued as menace without a lyrics sheet to hand. Not sure many people will be indifferent about this one.
NETHERLANDS
CLAUDE - C'est la vie
With all charges leveled against him following his expulsion from Eurovision last year having ultimately been dropped in the summer, I'd have assumed the path had been smoothed for Joost Klein to have another crack at the Contest this year with his national broadcaster AVROTROS's blessing; and reading up further it does appear that this very nearly happened. Eurovision's loss is, in the end, our loss as well, Congolese refugee Claude's chanson-cum-dance-pop proving more winsome from a backstory perspective (fell in love with the Contest whilst being processed) than a musical one.
CROATIA
MARKO BOŠNJAK - Poison Cake
...Which sees Croatia swapping the single-minded musical juggernaut of Rim Tim Tagi Dim for something closer to Bambie Thug's stylistic gear changes and darker demeanour. Poison Cake has certainly already achieved on a par with Doomsday Blue in one regard, some local detractors having similarly branded it satanic, and you'd want to wish Marko Bošnjak best of luck in the Contest given both that backlash and a slew of homophobic abuse. And if the song just doesn't work as well as Bambie's effort, the nursery rhyme interludes and industrial screams proving just too incompatible a juxtaposition, it's hard to knock the intellectual intent of a song which must surely include the first ever use of "genuflect" in the Contest. Diggi-loo Diggi-ley this is not.
SWITZERLAND
ZOË MË - Voyage
Eight years on, as close to an Amar Pelos Dois-inspired entry as I can remember, certainly in terms of delicacy and (barring a slightly overdone orchestral flourish near the end) restraint. Some of the hype around Zoë Më's style as "unique pop-poetry" probably isn't helpful for the performer; it's some pretty, not unwelcome respite from the thuds and screeches elsewhere, and ought to be enjoyed just as that.
CYPRUS
THEO EVAN - Shh
The lyrics are a riddle, if less in the style of Nik Kershaw and more that of a clue in Going for Gold - the thought suddenly occurs to me whether this track is a tribute to Henry Kelly? Maybe not. More stately brooding for the first third, before suddenly deciding to wheel out the EDM beats and Faithless motifs, making up for that lost time reasonably adequately.
Semi-Final #2
AUSTRALIA
GO-JO - Milkshake Man
If Finbarr Saunders wrote pop... Milkshake Man immediately had me thinking of Scooch's Flying the Flag (For You), but ultimately works better than that ill-starred UK entry (he said entry! Hihihihi!) owing to its infectious synthy chug and a higher (and less painstakingly set up) gag count. I fear I'll have quite a bit of explaining of things to do to the kids, mind.
MONTENEGRO
Nina ŽIŽIĆ - Dobrodošli
Boilerplate overwrought central European balladry that proved more popular with the judges in the national final than the eventual winner, which was later disqualified on the previously performed song technicality. One senses the continent's judges as a whole may be less forgiving of the opening 30 seconds or so, pitched so low that Nina can do no other than mumble flatly into her (proverbial or actual) boots.
IRELAND
EMMY - Laika Party
You can’t say the mononymous Emmy hasn’t tried to get here before now. Participant in three of the past four qualification events for Norway (as performer, juror and writer respectively), and part of an attempt to get Citi Zēni (of Eat Your Salad “fame”) through the Latvian qualifiers this year, too, it’s required Ireland’s embracing of a track binned off at an early-ish stage by the Norwegian broadcaster to grant her the ticket to the semis she’s evidently craved. And I get why she’s tried, I genuinely do. It’s the pop equivalent of those smaller-scale racing trainers who bought cast-offs from top Irish jumps yards for the glory of a runner in this year’s Grand National. It didn’t work for them, and it won’t work for Emmy either, a sub-Aqua vocal delivery preventing the sadness and optimism of the first dog in space narrative from shining through.
LATVIA
TAUTUMEITAS - Bur man laimi
A chant for happiness, and this disarming entry from a decade-long established folk/world act has indeed made me happy. Comparisons with Enya and (in particular) Adiemus on account of the interweaving vocals are facile. Rather, this is just a few more clanks and pulses away from being the sort of accompaniment the late Mark Bell might have created for Björk at one time. “Out-take from Homogenic” is a far richer compliment than I could give to many tracks in this or any year’s Contest.
ARMENIA
PARG - Survivor
Ten writers. Ten. Writers. Which one of you geniuses is going to own up to “I’m a survivor, stay aliver”, then? The stompiness of Iceland, the vaguely Game of Thrones cosplay of Norway, and an English accent like nothing heard on the planet since the episode of Castle with an American trying to do Geordie. Inexpertly executed, and not the winner.
AUSTRIA
JJ - Wasted Love
The description I read of Johannes’s countertenor voice before listening to this track briefly gave me hope of some New Wave-cum-Baroque amalgam recalling the doomed majesty of that much-missed, should-have-been star Klaus Nomi. No such luck. As an extended demonstration of his technical prowess, it certainly does its job. That’s effectively all it does, however, the bolting on of a thoroughly incongruous techno section from three-quarters distance almost a tacit admission of the absence of an actual song.
UNITED KINGDOM
REMEMBER MONDAY - What The Hell Just Happened?
The first few bars in, I thought my biggest beef was going to be the oh-my-God-I-was-like vacuity of certain lines. A few more in, the problem became not being able to remember what preceded the first of the numerous tempo and stylistic handbrake turns. Nemo proved in Eurovision last year what those of us who number among Cardiacs devotees have known for decades – restless, done well, is a thing of joy. What The Hell Just Happened? is restless done less well, the various stitched-together parts not incompatible but rather just not persistently interesting or rewarding enough. Here’s hoping those parts all survive Remember Monday’s weaning off of the Autotune come competition time, too. At least the trio’s big-eyed joie de vivre redolent of early Spice Girls and (assuming it's retained from the promo video) updated Bridgerton cosplay have a degree of appeal.
GREECE
KLAVDIA - Asteromata
As a bespectacled Greek, lazy comparisons of Klavdia with Nana Mouskouri (a Eurovision contestant herself in 1963, remember) will inevitably abound. She warrants better than that, and whilst easier to admire than fall in love with, this relatively traditional Mediterranean string ballad comprising a dialogue between refugee parent and child ought not have to rely on neighbour votes alone.
LITHUANIA
KATARSIS - Tavo akys
The point at which we discover whether Eurovision juries and/or voters are ready yet for something in thrall to the likes of early Radiohead. Kudos to broadcasters LRT for enabling something like this to be considered; ditto Katarsis for making no concessions to the Contest musically or lyrically - Tavo akys is a genuinely representative work. Whether it catches light is another matter.
MALTA
MIRIANA CONTE - Serving
Also known as The One That The British Made Them Change, the pun on a word for a self-confident person in queer and drag culture apparently too much for the BBC and Ofcom to stomach. And heaven knows Miriana presents as self-confident here; the architect, controller and arbiter of her own naughty fun and as at ease with her plus size as anyone I've seen grace a stage since Beth Ditto. A more restless affair musically than Finland's more pounding effort, whilst serving a not dissimilar purpose, it's nevertheless part of a greater whole sufficiently appealing to have one believe it would have gone deep into the contest even without the controversy.
GEORGIA
MARIAM SHENGELIA - Freedom
There's musical ambition here - a restless early section in tricky ten-eight time and the generous helping of Bond Theme orchestration say as much. There's also, however, too much of a breadcrumb trail back to Mariam Shengelia's apparent historic endorsements of the ruling Georgian Dream party, incompatible with the LGBTQIA+ inclusivity of this of all events. As Croatia's 2006 Homophobe of the Year (q.v. gay.hr) turned 2017 Eurovision contestant Jacques Houdek will attest to, not all stains are easily rinsed off.
FRANCE
Louane - Maman [#2]
The second song in Louane's recorded and published canon named Maman, and meant as a sequel to the first from 2015, updated to reflect her present-day status as the mother rather than the mothered. The sudden deletion of Maman #1 from all streaming platforms has garnered more interest than its creator likely intended, Louane's insistence that a song recognised as a comfort to many had now served its purpose appearing both rather solipsistic and occurring concurrently with the levying of sexual assault charges against one of its cowriters. Knowing all of this does make the track that bit less likeable. Not knowing all of this still doesn't make it an absolute delight, either, the overcooked vocal neither ballad fish nor chanson flesh.
DENMARK
SISSAL - Hallucination
One of the more unadorned tracks of its type this time round; no sleight of hand, unexpected drops, jarring inserts of time or style change, just an honest to goodness EDM floorfiller from a Faroese mum of two having the time of her life. That comes as a bit of light relief to me, but I fear the broader voting quorum may not view that quality so positively.
CZECHIA
ADONXS - Kiss Kiss Goodbye
Adonxs - a Slovakian performer made in London, earning his stripes academically at BIMM and musically in a multicultural baroque-pop quartet. A singer, an activist, a dancer, and a trailblazing winner of Idols in a country hitherto broadly resistant to anointing gay winners of such competitions. A nerveless performer of Kiss Kiss Goodbye, an arms-length, cool rebuttal of an absentee father, a track mining his more symphonic side. A potential breakout star from this year's Contest if navigating the semis successfully.
LUXEMBOURG
LAURA THORN - La poupée monte le son
There's a line of thought in popular music that it's better to be a decade or more out of date than, say, two to five. The Kiss Kiss ripoff of Luxembourg's belated return to the Contest last year wasn't able to prove that, largely through being no better executed than any of the other legion of Kiss Kiss ripoffs this century, but setting the clock back even further this time has begotten something quite lovely. Almost exactly sixty years since France Gall's Poupée de cire, poupée de son netted the county its second Contest victory, here is La poupée monte le son, an answer back of a song in which the doll gets to tell the boy to naff off and run back to mum. Less "yé-yé", and more "n'y pense même pas" (pardon my Google French), then. I'm not sure why Laura Thorn's backing is more 80s than 60s, but it's a much more faithful 80s-era Eurovision musical facsimile than most, to the point you'd half expect the lights to pan over at any stage to three shimmying backing singers with massive shoulder pads.
******
ISRAEL
YUVAL RAPHAEL - New Day Will Rise
There's a certain irony that Switzerland, the cradle of inter-national neutrality, finds itself having to ride the waves caused by one of the most politically divisive entries in the Contest's history.
If the ongoing attacks on Gaza haven't warranted Israel a ban from Eurovision before now, one assumes on the technicality of Palestine not being universally recognised across the UN as a sovereign state, then those more recent campaigns against Iran and Syria (both of whom are) must be getting close to stretching the European Broadcasting Union's avowed apolitical stance beyond tolerance.
It's already proven too much for the four present-day delegations and seventy former contestants calling for Israel to join Russia on the banned list; and what it would be to eavesdrop on any proceeding meetings between the EBU and Swiss Broadcasting Corporation as regards security at the Contest in general and for Yuval Raphael in particular. One alleged spitting and mimed throat-cutting incident during the pre-Contest meets and greets will only have served to remind the hosts of the enormity of their task.
Not that a spit, nor the anticipated boos in the auditorium come the second semi, are said likely to faze a performer who has irrefutably suffered far worse than that. In fairness to her, Yuval has continued to stick to the pledge not to discuss her narrow escape from death in the Nova Music Festival attack, though one could argue less charitably that there is no need for her to discuss that attack for it to remain part of the narrative in Basel this week, so indivisible is she from it.
A product of a conflict where the optics of the media have been of paramount importance to both sides in the battle to win over hearts and minds outside of Israel and Palestine, Yuval's victory in the national selection process can be promoted by the Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation as a fair and square triumph against 20 rivals over an eleven-week competition, or else spun by the IPBC's opponents as the cynical, emotionally manipulative reality show backstory to end them all. Whatever the truth of it, expect to see and hear both views aired more before the competition's end.
Expect also to see and hear further complaints that the choice of song for Yuval was a preordained, deliberately provocative act, a standpoint which overlooks two important points. First, that New Day Will Rise was but one from a longlist of 54 possibles. And second, at least in the form in which it will be performed at the Contest, that it's simply too hackneyed and everyman to feel pertinent solely to those grieving at home. Think a slightly more florid, less emotionally economical take on REM's Everybody Hurts, one which goes through all of the Reality Show Big Ballad gear changes in volume, key and orchestration at exactly the points you'd expect it to. More predictable than belligerent, ultimately.
Six paragraphs, and only one about the actual song. I don't actually want to have to do that in these reviews very often.
******
GERMANY
ABOR & TYNA - Baller
Who could possibly have predicted a dramatic upturn in the quality of the German entry this year? Well, actually me, having called for the return to the fray of Stefan Raab for the thick end of a decade. You're welcome. A man whose six previous Eurovisions between 1998 and 2010 as either writer, performer or selector of the German entry netted a win and five other top ten finishes, Raab's keen eyes and ears alighted upon this whip-smart kiss-off among those tracks posted on Abor & Tynna's Instagram presence. A chorus with the feel of Rihanna's Rude Boy gone rave adds to the appeal, but the rather half-arsed attempt at smashing a cello in the national final performance probably ought to remain there.
SERBIA
Princ - Mila
I'm sure that me and The Artist Formerly Known as Prince of Vranje would get on fine on a professional level, with him being a philologist and me a linguist and librarian and that. On a musical level, not so much, Mila offering up the male vocal variant of the overwrought central European ballad (c.f. Montenegro). The temptation to sing some of my parody track over the top of it ("Sava / please take off your balaclava / your golden hair frames your face / like a frame made of golden hair", etc.) is plenty hard to resist, I'll admit. Nice starry backdrop an' all in the national final, but starry backdrops alone do not a winner make.
FINLAND
ERIKA VIKMAN - Ich komme
Read up on Erika's status as Finland's self-styled "inappropriate woman and queen of trashy disco", and suddenly little about Ich komme surprises so much. We could have been here five years earlier, in truth, but for the national jury's enthusiasm for her 2020 paean to Hungarian porn star Cicciolina (yes, PWEI fans, that one) not mirroring that of the voting public, before COVID rendered their decision academic anyway. There's a full-blooded four-year relationship with a singer five decades her senior to factor in, too. A Eurovision entry (behave) that sticks to character, then, but it's no more stale for that - quite the opposite. The thudding techno cousin of Cha Cha Cha's party metal, Ich komme comes across like 2 Unlimited on amphetamines, sharing the battering ram insistence and huge chant-a-longa scope of Käärijä's 2023 runner-up. Resistance, one suspects, is futile, and good luck to whichever newsreaders have to announce its victory on air with a straight face.
It's that time of year once more. Shall we Eurovision?
No, we shall not, as Eurovision isn't a verb.
Shall we talk about Eurovision, then?
Yes, that's better. Kindly proceed.
J xx
Semi-Final #1
CYPRUS
SILIA KAPSIS - Liar
Bounces along at a fair rattle, but seems to take a fair bit of time to get to a relatively expendable chorus. Inoffensive, and that’s not the best thing to be in this contest.
SERBIA
TEYA DORA - Ramonda
Have the translation service of your choice on during this, for some of the most desolate lyrics you’ll come across at this or indeed any Eurovision. Not a drumbeat of any great heft to be had until 30 seconds from the end, either… and then, almost too late, a quiet note of hope. Crumbling, desperate beauty with a muted, monochrome staging to match, and if nowhere near as challenging a piece as Konstrakta’s healthcare-themed avant pop of 2022 still a second highly engaging Serbian entry in three years.
LITHUANIA
SILVESTER BELT - Luktelk
A fairly straightforward electronic pop pounder done few favours by its staging, the constant darts between bright monochrome and pitch dark often rendering invisible young master Belt (the first son of Conveyor and Chastity, presumably). In truth, his underpowered, claggy delivery was already well on the way to doing that anyway. We Are The Winners by LT United is still the highest finishing Lithuania entry of all time, you know.
IRELAND
BAMBIE THUG - Doomsday Blue
Already upsetting the right people at home; defiantly, militantly transgender- and enby-friendly, and about as far removed from Dana as an Irish Eurovision entry could possibly be. So polarising a piece of work, I suspect, that substantive progress in the contest is not a given, and there are perhaps too many not wholly compatible things going on in three minutes. Nevertheless, this ancient sod quite likes the echoes of Lard’s Jello Biafra-fronted cover of They’re Coming To Take Me Away in those crunchy verses (even if Bambie might have been aiming for something closer to Marilyn Manson).
UKRAINE
ALYONA ALYONA & JERRY HEIL - Teresa & Maria
One of those instances where the parameters within which Eurovision songs must operate in the contest proper does a track a disservice. Go online and find the four and half minute version replete with the choir backing and a looped unaccompanied vocal opening (occupying the territory between Laurie Anderson’s O Superman and Mindmachine by Deine Lakaien), both cut on grounds of brevity and permitted on-stage personnel. Without them, this still pristine paean to hope and unification extends Ukraine’s recent run of arresting entries yet further; with them, it’s compelling.
POLAND
LUNA - The Tower
Inoffensive pop done well appears to be Poland’s vehicle of choice at the moment, the bouncy Solo of last year succeeded by this account of self-realisation with verses delivered in a light, tiddly early 1980s-apeing synthpop style. Won’t win but ought not tank either.
CROATIA
BABY LASAGNA - Rim Tim Tagi Dim
Soooooo… after the monster success of Cha Cha Cha last year, where is the party metal song with a memorable title going to come from? Ah, here we are. In essence Dick Whittington, but with the cat left at home, and an attempt at social comment that will resonate in territories other than just Croatia (specifically: the brain drain of talent from home. I could be back in Saddleworth!). Again, because I’m ancient, on listening to this I find myself wanting to call this one Rim-Tim-Tagi-Dim-bus-stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel #iykyk.
ICELAND
HERA BJÖRK - Scared of Heights
How this actually won the national qualifier is a mystery to some in Iceland and decidedly fishy to others. Hera made the grand final in 2010. This insipid number, little better than aeroplane boarding tannoy music, won’t take her back there. So soon after those double helpings of Daði Freyr and the engaging female alt.country trio, Iceland have lost their way badly as a Eurovision contender.
SLOVENIA
RAIVEN - Veronika
Far removed from last year's Maroon5alikes Joker Out; instead, the story of an early C15th countess tried and murdered for witchcraft, sung by Raiven whilst wearing little more than a few leaves. As with Ukraine, however, this isn't the only track which exists in a superior form outwith the contest, namely a genuinely taking vocal solo with piano accompaniment as opposed to the apparently favoured not-as-dark-as-they-think-it-is electropop. A pity.
FINLAND
WINDOWS95MAN - No Rules!
Guildo Horn (charismatically silly). Stefan Raab (the genius of smuggling a very specific regional German dialect into a multinational contest). LT United (grown, suited men doing a hubristic playground taunt). Alf Poier (thumbing his nose at Eurovision's excess, a performer with the disposition of a buzzsaw). All Eurovision novelty songs which worked. No Rules!, alas, fails in much the same way as Jendrik's I Don't Feel Hate did for Germany in 2021, the message of positivity delivered in a less infantile manner, perhaps, but still lost amid the "I'm mad, me!" props and antics. The disgraced electroclash performer Har Mar Superstar had better underpants, too.
MOLDOVA
NATALIA BARBU - In the Middle
Per the advice in Måns and Petra's peerless Love Love Peace Peace, Moldova have brought violins. They've also brought a nondescript clatter of a track which landed the National Final, despite Natalia's performance being all over the shop - by turns flat, thin or screechy. Technically substandard vocal deliveries were punished by voters last year (Greece and Denmark especially); they will be again.
AZERBAIJAN
FAHREE ft ILKIN DOVTALOV - Özünlə apar
Does the whole self-discovery thing with an admirable degree of restraint and calm absent in some of the other tracks attempting similar this year, and the blending in of Ilkin Dovlatov's mugham vocals doesn't feel at all contrived or forced. Very much more sympathetic, effective use of strings than the preceding contestant also.
AUSTRALIA
ELECTRIC FIELDS - One Milkali (One Blood)
Nothing Australia nominated this year was ever going to work its way into my affections as much as Voyager ultimately did in 2023, but I still think I might just have found my second favourite Australia synthpop duo (The Presets have long been home for all money). A first appearance in Eurovision of the Aboriginal language Yankunytjatjara, and it wouldn't shock were the flamboyant Zaachariaha Fielding to prove a breakout star of the contest.
PORTUGAL
IOLANDA - Grito
A graduate of the songwriting degree at the University of Sussex, it turns out. Whether on account of that grounding or (hopefully) in spite of it, Grito is an underwhelmingly rote piece of work, right down to the money note being reached for exactly when you'd expect. Can we have the wonky subtlety of Maro back, please?
LUXEMBOURG
TALI - Fighter
Holly Valance's 2002 hit reading of Tarkan Tevetoğlu's Kiss Kiss cast a long shadow over Eurovision, with countless (mostly pale) facsimiles entered up for some years after. Having had just the 31 years to take a good long look at what wins a Eurovision Song Contest nowadays, Luxembourg has decided a confused hybrid of a Kiss Kiss revival and the French chanteuse/diva formula is the way to go. They might be in for a shock.
SWEDEN
MARCUS & MARTINUS - Unforgettable
As co-written by "Joker" Thörnfeldt, one of the team behind the second coming of Loreen last year. Rumbling, insistent, with more than an echo of Salva Mea by Faithless (the hit remix version rather than the original) and a dark, Tron/Matrix-styled staging which works in a way Lithuania's simply doesn't, this is precision tooled not to fail.
UNITED KINGDOM
OLLY ALEXANDER - Dizzy
Dizzy doesn't feel like any less calculated a track than Unforgettable, the nods to It's A Sin the track absolutely unmissable and Olly Alexander already familiar up to a point in a few Eurovision territories (in particular Benelux and Greece) from overseas distribution of It's A Sin the television drama. Nice key changes and fills aside, however, this still has more of the feel of a comfy game of spot the influence rather than a tournament winner; and whilst some of the Sam Ryder-derived momentum lost by Mae Muller's tentative performance last year may be regained, a chance of better has gone begging. In the self same week that the actual Pet Shop Boys have landed their highest charting album since Very in 1993, it's hard not to wish that Neil and Chris had been enlisted to write Olly something more compelling.
GERMANY
ISAAK - Always on the Run
Comparatively unfancied in Germany's national contest, Isaak ultimately just outpointed Max Mutzke, whose eighth place finish in Eurovision 2004 has only been bettered by Germany twice since. No pressure, then. He growls, he emotes, the midtempo plod plods along at a mid tempo, and a continent shrugs. It's not the worst thing Germany has submitted in the past five years, albeit the bar of comparison has been set extraordinarily low.
Semi-Final #2
MALTA
SARAH BONNICI - Loop
For anyone who missed SloMo, Chanel's third-place finisher in 2022 for Spain, here it is again, reheated in the microwave and with a Malta sticker slapped on the packaging. The tune's largely the same, if perhaps a tad more lumbering. The choreography's largely the same, the lifts especially. Its Wikipedia entry lists as many as ten people who've had a hand in the songwriting. It's all very calculated, but set to be torpedoed by Sarah Bonnici's thinning, increasingly breathless voice, if the performance in the Maltese national final is any guide.
ALBANIA
BESA - Titan
Sadly there just aren't enough songs written about makes of Leyland double-decker buses, and despite the title this one isn't either. Continuing a theme of the first semifinal, this I-will-survive number exists in a superior form, the Albanian language original that comes closer to Besa's description of the song as "a ballad with a lot of contrast". Whatever the motivations were for reinventing it as a Beyonce or Christina facsimile in English, it's hard to conclude the new version represents an upgrade.
GREECE
MARINA SATTI - Zari
Energetic but not overly frenetic, a big-hearted and open-armed exploration of Greek cultures old and new, if one that loses a little something without the promo video.
SWITZERLAND
NEMO - The Code
"Somewhere between the Os and ones, that's where I found my kingdom come". From the falsetto stabs to the swooping chorus via the slick rap which doesn't outstay its welcome, this dramatic, restless, inventive relating of a nonbinary awakening is closer to what I'd like Olly Alexander to have been given to work with. Nemo does a splendid version of this to a solo piano accompaniment, too. Another potential breakout star of the contest, methinks.
CZECHIA
AIKO - Pedestal
Defiant, rocky, sweary and with its Olivia Rodrigo influences worn proudly. A fun little track when done properly in its recorded incarnation, but file it as another whose performance in the Contest proper needs to be an awful lot more polished than in the more forgiving environment of the national final, throughout which Aiko largely forewent singing for shouting.
AUSTRIA
KALEEN - We Will Rave
Call me an old sod (you'd not be wrong), but dropping "rave" into the title of a track does confer a certain expectation of late-1980s/early-1990s styling, nosebleed synths, Roland Alpha Junos and TR-909s, and so on. We Will Rave sort of gets there, though in sounding in part like Maximum Overdrive by 2 Unlimited it's more Eurodance than hardcore dance. In truth, there's almost too much of a song here for the comparison to land completely. Meanwhile, it's interesting to observe that Self Esteem's outfit from the Prioritise Pleasure cover, minus the hat, appears to have been leased for the contest.
DENMARK
SABA - Sand
A striking performer with - as a bipolar, adopted, black queer woman - quite the life story already. In Sand she's been gifted potentially one of the most anthemic choruses of the whole contest, and it has to be hoped that the failure to do it (or the verses she rather mumbled through) any greater justice in the national final was as much down to the issues with her playback earpieces as it appeared.
ARMENIA
LADANIVA - Jako
For pure, unalloyed, unadulterated joy, this is the tops. Yes, a criticism of the societal norms imposed upon girls that carry into adulthood, but set to an irresistible Balkan-Latin American hybrid, trumpet, uke and all.
LATVIA
DONS - Hollow
A vocal Trojan Horse, being a stadium-slaying voice contained within a Danbert Nobacon clone. As with Armenia's entry, the conferring of expectation weighs heavily in the narrative. Unlike Jako, it's proving a welter burden. For all of my flippancy, one of the better ballads this time round.
SAN MARINO
MEGARA - 11:11
As not selected for Spain in 2022 or 2023, and instead finding a country in San Marino with recent previous for borrowing acts from elsewhere in the world, let alone continent. Anything was going to be an upgrade on Piqued Jacks' knuckle-dragging abomination of last year, and whilst Megara aren't as genre-shredding as their own publicity would have you believe, this entirely serviceable alternative metal is elevated by the flamenco break, electronic swishes and the black and pink outfits.
GEORGIA
NUTSA BUZALADZE - Firefighter
That's this year's lyrics and imagery about fire taken care of, then - cross it off your bingo cards accordingly. You have to go back to 2016 for the last time Georgia qualified for the grand final, and there have been more intriguing candidates to try than this in the interim. A pity, as Nutsa's resume reads as if she could quite happily have taken on a more challenging track had one been offered.
BELGIUM
MUSTII - Before the Party's Over
A meditation on tempus fugit, carpe diem and other things less easily summarised in Latin phrases. Before The Party's Over broods effectively on its journey to a big finish, which for all that it's Musti repeating the title eight times works in a way that other similar conceits elsewhere in the contest simply don't. A commanding presence in gold head and body paint amid a press conference-style semicircle of microphones, this performer's confidence and comfort in his own skin just pours out of him. This ought to prove popular.
ESTONIA
5MIINUST AND PUULUUP - (Nendest) narkootikumidest ei tea me (küll) midagi
Those of us who still lament Estonia's failure to send the dark humour and costumed thrash of Winny Puuh to the 2013 contest might just enjoy this. Different musically, yes, being a collaboration between a hip-hop four-piece and an alt.folk duo, but possessed of a similar mordant wit and punk attitude. There's a livelier intellect at play than that shits and giggles song title might imply - no Because I Got High by Afroman, this - as well as social comment on the police's disproportionate suspicions of the poor as drug offenders. The whole thing pounds along very pleasingly indeed, too.
ISRAEL
EDEN GOLAN - Hurricane
Criticised back home for acquiescing to EBU instructions to modify the content and rhetoric (real or imagined) in the original lyric, to the point of being dismissed now as "a meaningful anthem reduced to just another song", though some interpretations are still possible in its current form. Criticised here for being identikit present-day Eurovision balladry largely bereft of invention or surprise. It's hard not to think back to 2002, when Israel's participation in the contest was also the subject of murmurings and disquiet against the backdrop of the Second Intifada (Operation Defensive Shield having concluded only three weeks before the contest). The simple ballad Light A Candle, imbued with no great political significance beyond a universal expression of hope, garnered Israel a respectable twelfth. Something comparable might have made for a wiser choice of entry this time around, on either or both political and artistic grounds.
NORWAY
GÅTE - Ulveham
San Marino's most obvious competitor for the RAWK!!! vote, and for all of that one's swagger this is the more beguiling of the two tracks. More than a little proggy, yet with none of the more indulgent and negative qualities which that term can connote; well grounded in its parent country's folklore and balladry; and in truth that bit harder rocking than Megara. It's the closest thing this year has to offer to Voyager, like whom Gåte have been around since 1999.
NETHERLANDS
JOOST KLEIN - Europapa
I'm immediately reminded of my time of living in Germany in 1995-6, when the Dutch duo Charlie Lownoise & Mental Theo were among the many Eurodance/happy hardcore/gabber acts gaining commercial traction there. Whilst Joost Klein was born too late in 1997 for that period to have influenced him at the time, here he presides over what is a more faithful pastiche of CL&MT - and for that matter Scooter (who are called to mind in Europapa's brief shouty intro), Marusha, Technohead, etc. - than the Austrian entry is of the rave genre it chooses to namecheck. All that's really missing are a few extra bpm. The touching end might just have you in bits, however.
FRANCE
SLIMANE - Mon amour
Soooooo… if the tried and trusted return to a chanteuse didn't work last year, what next? The 2016 winner of France's version of The Voice, evidently. A pretty stock, come-back-to-me-I-love-you lyric and a delivery recalling Jon Secada or a reedier, slightly adenoidal Seal doesn't scream winner.
ITALY
ANGELINA MANGO - La noia
Debate will always rage as to whether a Song Contest entry should see commercial release outwith its own country in the weeks prior to the contest itself, and La Noia has already gone top 40 in four of the countries in a position to vote for it come finals night. Not that this sparky amalgam of pop and cumbia is going to need much help, anyway. Like, say, Cyprus, this takes its own sweet time to get to the chorus. Unlike Cyprus, however, the journey there has some nice touches and the swirling, minor-key chorus itself is sufficiently memorable. I'm reminded of the quote from Andy McCluskey of OMD, whose tremendous Bauhaus Staircase album of last year was the result of "rediscover[ing] the creative power of total bloody boredom". Unlike that album, La Noia was not created in the grip of lockdown, but the motivating power of boredom was, by all accounts, quite the same. So, er, yay boredom!
SPAIN
NEBULOSSA - Zorra
Paloma Blanca's otherwise intriguing introduction to New Flamenco last year was shorn of significant impact (and therefore votes) by an underpowered vocal performance. Twelve months on similar concerns abound with Mery Bas, for all that the Miami Vice synths and drum machines aren't so pounding and heavy as to obfuscate everything around them. Depending on your point of view, Zorra is either a semantics student's delight, being an exploration of the misogyny inherent in the Spanish language (in particular the contradiction of "zorra" being an insult whilst "zorro" is heroic) set to a tasty backing; or else it's a piece of degenerate filth containing nine "sluts" and 37 "bitches" that Mediawatch-UK is no longer around to save you from.
